


You're My Excuse to Travel

by synthwave



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Europa, DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:10:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5595838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synthwave/pseuds/synthwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even with time and death on their heels they've got to stop running eventually, and it may as well be between Paris and Rome. (Takes place after Batman: Europa #3.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're My Excuse to Travel

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how they're going to wrap up this miniseries in one more issue, but I guess I'm in it 'til the end! I'm not sure how I feel about this one; I have a lot of criticisms of Europa and a large part of them involve Bruce's characterization. I wanted to keep a little of the comic's style while giving him a bit more conflict and introspection. As always, I can't be trusted with this kind of thing because everything I touch turns to painful yearning. Whoops.
> 
> Thank you so, so much to [Mellie](https://mellie-art.tumblr.com/post/159081235034/safe-he-mutters-batman-doesnt-move-safe) for doing art for this fic! You are a superstar.

_we're set to be dead men whenever_  
_to leave here tetherless_  
_and at the end of our lives_  
_it's good to be the only thing left_

_smile for me if you can_  
_i want to have that in my head_

\--Baths, "Departure"

He's breaking down. 

If he keeps to himself on this side of the room, pulls his cape around him, and makes himself as small as he can--knees to the chest, arms around the knees, head resting on his arms--the chill isn't as bad. But then the heat is claustrophobic, he's smothering in his suit, and all he wants is to strip to the skin and spread out on the bed beneath the window and drink in the night air. The humidity isn't helping, but at least it's late enough in the year to be cold in Marseille.

It's better when they're moving and fighting, because then there's no time to think about how the virus is chewing at him and adrenaline can keep him on his feet ahead of the exhaustion. The sickness is worse than his wounds. His body needs rest to heal, especially after he's pushed himself, but now that he's forced to stop for a few hours he can't sleep. 

It's worse somehow that Joker has been relatively quiet since leaving Paris. Batman wonders if any part of that could be sympathy or regret for Nina, then decides not to entertain any illusions. 

He's a mess. They both are, and for once Batman might be worse off. He hasn't been out of the suit since they started traveling, and he's reluctant to risk it until he knows for sure who's watching them and how. As for Joker, he often doesn't bother with linear time unless it's necessary--or it strikes his fancy--so he might shower and comb his hair tomorrow, whenever he decides that is. It's hard to blame him; the days and nights are starting to blur together, and only the urgency of their situation and _you have one week_ still photo-crisp in his mind gives Batman motivation to keep the hours straight. It's _crucial_ to keep the hours straight, so of course he can't do it anymore. 

The safe house does have a shower, and it does have the bed, but instead of using either they've ended up on the floor of the upstairs bedroom, sitting across from each other. Joker is slumped against the far wall singing softly to himself--wordless, meandering, repeating a short tune that borders on melancholy. He's a more than a little off key; Batman knows the music but can't quite place it. That bothers him more than the noise, so finally he lifts his head and says, "What is it?"

Joker stops immediately. "Hm?"

"That you're singing." 

"You don't know it, Bats?" He smiles. "Just an old French song."

The punchline is Tchaikovsky. Batman buries his head in the circle of his arms so it can't swim away from him. "Get some rest," he says, because one of them has to.

"Can't, won't, don't want to. What if you die in my sleep?" Joker's laughter turns into coughing and he falls silent.

Something about the way he says it makes Batman look up again. "Does that frighten you?"

Joker rolls his foot back and forth slowly and looks at the overhead beams. "Well, you know how it is. You go out with somebody, hit it off, have a swell time together. He takes you back to his place to spend the night, and then you wake up alone in the morning. I'd like to think you're not that kind of guy, but you've broken my heart before."

It might actually frighten him. In a horrible way his increasing vulnerability is fascinating. That Joker might die of the virus himself isn't strong evidence that he had nothing to do with spreading it, but Batman considers it less likely the weaker it makes him. It's impacting his ability to perform. 

"Drink something," Batman suggests, although he knows he's dehydrated too and should follow his own advice before dispensing it.

"Do we have anything stronger than water? Since we aren't sleeping, how about a game." Joker manages a leer. "'Never Have I Ever'? I'm easy to play with, especially for you."

"Save your confessions for the jury," he says dryly.

" _Begging_ your pardon, but I've been informed that the Gotham City District Court frowns on that sort of behavior during a trial."

Batman snorts, but it's jarring to hear _Gotham_ , which has started to feel as though it's not only thousands of miles away but years in the past. That's wrong, utterly wrong, and it shames him. It must be a combination of the illness and unusual surroundings that makes it feel as though he's passed into a different world, where he's sharing a room and half a week with his mortal enemy and everything is fine, just fine, if not for the thing destroying them. A truce with the Joker is not like a truce with anyone else. All normal rules are suspended. 

He's chilled now, but can't make himself stand up to close the window, so he waits for it to pass. Once it does, he'll want the cold. He doesn't know how long he sits in silence--fifteen minutes, maybe. Hours, maybe.

"Batman?" Joker whispers in the dark, like a child whose friend is hiding to scare him, who is afraid it's not a game anymore. 

Batman opens his mouth to reply and it sticks in his throat; he can't suppress a coughing fit. "What?" he chokes out at last.

"Just making sure you're still with me."

"If we live, you're going to go back to wishing I was anywhere else."

"Can't go back to where I've never been." Joker sings again, softly and just as off-key as before: "I'm at heaven's door, _innamorato_..." He trails off, giggles to himself, and falls silent.

This is one of his favorite jokes: the ironic _I love you_. It's meant to disarm, probably, and even out the balance of power between them: if Batman were to hit him Joker would come back laughing and singing, _kiss me, kiss me sweet_ and so there's no point. _How did you know something was wrong with him? He begged you to stop hurting him._

Batman is used to shrugging it off and refusing to rise to the bait, but right now--for some reason--it rubs on a raw spot. "Right. I'll start keeping a closer eye on my back if it starts looking like we'll both survive."

The quiet from Joker's side of the room stretches on. Then: "Together," he says suddenly, with a fierceness that only ever means he's serious. "I told you. We go together or not at all."

The heat rises in him again. The heat is worse than the cold. It's suffocating. He swallows. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"As sure as meat loves salt." The taunting lilt is back in his voice. "Does that _frighten_ you?"

It does. If there's any truth in it, it does.

There's still a chance Joker had something to do with all of this. He thinks of Alfred: _'Get it'? Like it's a joke._ The message on the computer screen: _Have fun._ Would Joker allow this to happen to himself, to both of them, to be...what? Close?

That. That's why it frightens him.

Batman has always been of two minds when it comes to Joker, and he knows neither of them are correct. There's the twisted part of him, consumed by hate, that wants to hurt and even kill--that feels a deep, sick satisfaction when his enemy breaks and suffers, that wants him to live his last moments in terror, regretting everything. And then there's the part of him that feels even sicker at the thought, which only wants him to understand what he's done and make it stop. That part is forever frustrated by Joker's intelligence and insight and creativity, and can't help straining to reach whatever's left of the human being drowning in there.

The only reasonable tactic to apply to the Joker is apathy. Batman knows that. If you want to really destroy an artist, you don't write a scathing denunciation of their work. You don't waste your time going back to it over and over, examining every detail. You refuse to comment. Batman has never been able to do that with lives at stake, even if one of those lives is this man who is all at once a cruel, petty child and an unstoppable engine of destruction and (he suspects, deep down) some kind of thwarted, pain-warped, vengeful idealist.

"Joker," he says.

After a slow second: "Mm?"

"I'm going to take my mask off. Five minutes."

Another few seconds pass, and then he sees Joker cover his face with his hands. "Safe," he says, muffled. "No peeking."

Batman slides his fingers under the cowl and when the first breath of air finds his skin he forgets to be worried or watchful and pulls it off. He feels naked, but for once it doesn't matter. His scalp crawls, his hair is disgusting, he has days' worth of unshaven stubble creeping along his jaw, and he doesn't care. As long as he can lean his head back and turn his face up to feel the breeze stirring under the blinds, he'll live a few more hours.

"Br--" Joker begins, stops. Batman goes still.

"--ight lights, big city," Joker finishes, singing. He smiles behind his hands, teeth flashing in the dark. "Gone to my baby's head..."

Batman breathes out, rolls his eyes. 

"No? _Wayyyy_...down yonder on the Chattahoochee, it gets hotter than a--"

"Do you take requests?" 

"You betcha."

"Shut up."

Joker cackles, but he's quiet after that. There's a lot of that lately; Batman's used to not being able to shut him up unless he's willing to do it manually. He should enjoy it while he can. Instead he asks, "How's your fever?"

Hands still firmly over his eyes, Joker turns his head toward him. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Bats." He clears his throat. "I'm not doing so good."

He doesn't sound good. "Dizzy?"

"Yeah."

"Take the bed." Two suggestions listened to and acted on might be too much to hope for in one night.

"Put your face back on," Joker says instead. "I'm coming over."

"Five minutes," Batman reminds him.

"It's been ten. Do I have to keep track of everything?"

Has it? Linear time. He doesn't know whether to trust him. He can't bring himself to put it back on, not yet. "Just keep your damned eyes closed and stay put."

Joker keeps his eyes closed as far as he can tell, but he shifts and crawls forward, pauses with one hand out. "Marco."

"No."

"Aha." Brightening, he inches toward him. When he reaches the opposite wall, he collapses with his back to it, chest heaving, and folds himself in. He leans his head against Batman's arm, and even through the suit he can feel him burning up. "Safe," he mutters.

  
[](https://mellie-art.tumblr.com/post/159081235034/safe-he-mutters-batman-doesnt-move-safe)  


  


Batman doesn't move. "Safe," he agrees, and couldn't say why. 

All normal rules suspended. All but the one even Joker won't break.

The worst part is that having him there isn't repulsive, even with the heat coming off of him. Alone with him, it's almost possible to set aside everything that's gone before. As though they've always been like this, formed out of nothing one night in mid-stride, mid-argument, leaning clumsily on each other ever since. And if he could let go of his perception of time--if the virus does its work--the next few days might stretch out to feel like months. Years. No normal rules, no game. Just an endless fever dream.

_Gotham,_ he thinks. _Alfred_. And when he looks down at Joker and sees him trembling and clenching his teeth, he knows that time doesn't actually work that way for him, either. Not really.

"Now, see, this is romantic," Joker murmurs, digging his nails into his arm when a cough seizes him. "My last visit here was business, not pleasure, and I never expected to be in Provence with you trying to get me into bed."

He wonders, not for the first time, what would happen if he called Joker's bluff. It wouldn't take much. Turn it into improv under his feet, instead of playing the straight man. _Yes, and--_

Would he recoil? Would it make him uncomfortable--the game no longer safe, the joke no longer funny? It might only be the lure of the unattainable that keeps him going; he might drop it instantly, bored. 

That's a best-case scenario and there's no reason to feel troubled by it, emotionally or otherwise. 

The worst-case scenario, of course, is if it turns out to have never been a joke at all.

Batman is very tired. 

_What do you want to do before you die, Bruce?_ The fever is shaking him. It's cooking him in his skin, even with the wind on his face and the chill deep in his bones. He isn't thinking clearly, which is why he can't push away the nightmarish thought of laying tangled in bed with the monster beside him. 

It isn't lust, no, god no, he's too sick for that, even if it isn't one of the worst things his mind could conjure--but even bare-skinned to ease the suffering of the fever, they would be warm enough together to ward off the chill. He rarely longs for human touch, but he's aching now. There's so little they haven't done to tear one another apart, and if they're going to die he can't help wondering what it would be like to break each other gently, just once. 

Four days ago, he tells himself, that would have been unthinkable. Right now it almost seems possible.

How obscene, to want to hold him.

"Penny for your thoughts," Joker says, and Batman thinks irrationally that he _knows._

Whether he knows or not, whether he's playing a game or not, he still wins this round. Batman turns away, pulls himself tightly into the corner, and rests his throbbing head against the wall. "They aren't worth that much."

Joker laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write mainstream canon Batman often at all! But I choose to think of Europa as taking place in its own universe until proven otherwise.
> 
> The title is also borrowed from a Baths song of the same name. 
> 
> Apart from warbling Tchaikovsky, Joker is singing Dean Martin, Jimmy Reed, and uh, Alan Jackson. Bless his heart.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Safe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10546024) by [melody1987](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melody1987/pseuds/melody1987)




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